In Reply to: What I'm hearing.... posted by jdaniel@jps.net on March 21, 2017 at 09:38:06:
Yes, I think you are right--it's the tension or effort or resistance to nudge the music that little half-step from B to C, EXCEPT that it cannot be a final resting place, only temporary; that is the genius that puts all the YEARNING of the plot into the third measure of the theme music.
PLOT SPOILERS FOLLOW (plot spoilers I left out of my blog post)
The male lead meets an old woman who hands him a keepsake and says, "Come back to me." So, years later, he travels back in time through hypnosis to 1912 (right). He and the young actress (who is later the old woman) fall in love and plan to run away and marry, but he finds a modern penny in a pocket of his old-style suit and the spell is broken and he returns to the present. Where he basically pines away and starves himself and dies of a broken heart. And then of course he swims toward the light and he is hale and hearty and in clean clothes, and his lady friend is smiling and looking like she did in 1912 (right).
Despite having an enviable education at a school founded in 762, John Barry liked this plot, and he did a masterful job of ignoring logic and summing up the weepie aspect in fewer notes than needed to sing a Haiku.
Bravo + RIP.
John
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Follow Ups
- I agree entirely... (Plot Spoiler Warning) - John Marks 10:31:28 03/21/17 (1)
- Somewhere in Time - TGR 07:59:14 03/24/17 (0)